Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Troy Davis

With time ticking away on the death-watch clock, the state of Georgia on Tuesday steamrolled all reasonable doubt about the guilt of Troy Davis. He’s now cleared to die by lethal injection, an impressive win for the Peach State’s killing machine, which has racked up 51 executions since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

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Back in 1991, Davis got the death penalty after being convicted of killing an off-duty police officer in Savannah two years earlier. But with no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and with seven of nine witnesses later recanting their testimony and others coming forth to say someone else had confessed to the crime, Davis managed to hold off three attempted executions on appeal.

On further review in November, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. let the original call stand. “While the State’s case may not be ironclad, most reasonable jurors would again vote to convict,” Moore wrote.

Unfortunately for Mr. Davis, the American public is largely still in favor of the death penalty:

According to a recent Gallup poll, about 64 percent of Americans support capital punishment, and about one-third say that killing innocent people is a “natural cost of an important punishment.”